Today is hard. Gentleness and love to all the women and all the souls who are also feeling that. I’m at the laundromat and there is a man that has a t-shirt on that says “Only YES means YES”. It’s striking to me how much it affects my nervous system to see a man walking around with a statement about consent and against sexual violence.

May we be evolving as a human race, may compassion and justice seep deeper into our practice of being human, may those that are wounded in such ways that they cause harm and use acts of violence and abuse of power STOP and find healing. May we grow in our abilities to be in loving, intimate and respectful relationships.

Attentive. Being a good student. Listening for what we can learn.
Giving up a whole day of our busy lives — because we know this is important.

Truths revealed. Layers of our privilege glaring before us, for us to see.
Asked again and again — where is your empathy?
Perhaps some words land in a particular way,
And we allow our hearts to break.
Shame, sorrow, rage, confusion.
We feel the tremble in our own bodies.
How can this be? This is not right.

And then what?
We go back to our homes. Back to our lives.
Perhaps we think about — What can I do? What will I do?
Perhaps we make commitments, tell others to hold us accountable.
We process what we’ve heard.
Perhaps the intensity of listening and actually hearing is too much and we run away,
escape into the comfort of our familiar, into the ease of our peace.

Meanwhile. For those for whom these realities are their every breathing moment reality —
Where is the rest? Where is the escape? Where is the return to “my life”? Who fills in when they need a pause?

The hustle continues. Trying to provide safe spaces for youth continues. Alternatives to the streets, the guns, the violence. Alternatives to the classrooms and the spaces for leisure, where adult and peer eyes look at these teenagers and young people and believe they are lesser, up to no good, not as smart, not on a path to a bright future, believe that their parents don’t care. Hustling to create alternatives to narrow views of what their future could be. Alternatives to always having to live in the hustle.

These leaders are providing opportunities for young people to experience the joys and pleasures that life can offer. The youth have an opportunity to feel someone who is glowing with pride and appreciation for their existence, for the unique humans that they are. The youth feel the hearts of those who believe in them, who sacrifice everything they have towards the hope of their brighter future. Youth get to experience opportunities to learn relevant life skills, to grow networks of people who want to lift one another up. They provide space for laughing. Dancing. Playing. Smiling.

And then the late night hours, morning news… 12-year-old killed, 18-year-old suffering from gunshot wounds. Futures pierced with the bullets of a moment’s reality. Hope for tomorrow disrupted by the corruption of today.

And again — who is present to deal with the trauma as it is unfolding. Who feels the response-ability, the obligation to be part of the solution. And who sits civilly. In our chairs. Listening. Emotion-filled, but paralyzed in our bodies. How long have we been sitting in our chairs, at our desk, running errands, staying busy… and yet…

Today, July 1st, 2018, in Asheville, North Carolina — People of Color are absolutely disproportionately carrying the weight of leading actual change in this city. They are absolutely doing the majority of the heavy lifting to bring about more safety, fairness, justice and morality in our city. They are doing the physical and emotional labor of caring for one another in a city that is ready and willing to leave people to suffer and even die rather than actually change. They are creating spaces where we — liberal white women, progressive white men, social change oriented white folks — sit civilly, listen, and perhaps even feel. Sometimes we see that we are needed and we step in with them. Usually, if we get involved, we hang around the edges or yell loudly in inappropriate places. There are too few of us who get our hands dirty, follow their lead, and use our own deep listening and discernment to recognize what is helpful and what is more harmful.

Is today the day that one more person sees that our own life and freedom and peace and comfort is actually bound to the life and freedom and peace and comfort of others? Is today the day that more of us feel the obligation to be a part of the solutions instead of sitting by silently, or only speaking up on facebook or twitter or showing up at a rally once every few months?

It is summer time. Violent crime is on the rise in this city. Police officers can harass and beat residents on camera and still be found as innocent. Community leaders are busting their asses to try and create different realities, to try and find solutions, while being the ones leading the efforts to implement those solutions AND educate the rest of us about why what they are doing is essential and necessary. Meanwhile, they work fulltime jobs and care for their own immediate and extended families.

Are we ready to get organized as a city and make significant changes that cultivate greater care and support for one another and assertively address the oppressive and discriminatory systems that are in place?

Those who are vulnerable because of the racist, classist, and oppressive systems that this country is built up need all of us to be involved. Those of us that are privileged, detached from our capacities to empathize and connect with a greater whole and humanity, our well-being requires our involvement too.

The local is the regional is the national is the global. We can build strong networks of mutual support, resilience, and evolutionary action. There is a unique role that we each have to play. This is a massive puzzle, a huge ecosystem, and each of us have something different to contribute — what’s yours to do? What’s yours to contribute?

For me, in this moment, I had to write. The urgency to want to act and yet not clear what will best serve finds an outlet in words. And with these words is prayer, my own effort to extend my hand in a gesture of “please join me”, a prayer that perhaps one person reading will feel a new spark in their heart that says — “Yes. I’m ready now. Let’s get to work. I will be part of the change.” And prayers for peace to those that are suffering, courage and protection for those that are leading towards different realities, and prayers for the web of our connections to strengthen so that we may be collectively more effective.

And to keep it vulnerable and transparent, today I also sit with my own personal conflict — my emotions are swept by this reality and so I’m not as available to loved ones today in the ways that I had planned to be. I’m preparing for 6 days away with family, and yet I feel that organizing and activation is so needed right now. I’m nervous about the time away when I’ll feel this need to pretend to enjoy this particular holiday season that makes me cringe… and yet the loved ones gathering mean the world to me. And I’m sitting with my white woman tendencies that feel an urgency to act — like I should be doing more now.

Breathing. Prayer. One step at a time. And LISTENING DEEPLY — to the spiritual guidance that I receive and to the guidance from those I am in community with. This is why I invest in growing strong and trusting relationships.

On this Father’s Day, I am thinking about the societal role of father’s as protectors. I’m profoundly grateful for all the men who show up to protect, love and nurture young people and I’m grateful to all the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, brothers, and aunties who fill that role when the fathers aren’t able. I’m also feeling how self-centered and self-absorbed many white families are, how often the parenting of children is mostly just one’s own children and how easy it has been, across history in this country, to protect one’s own children and be silent and inactive as other people’s children are given no protection from hatred, violence, and injustice.

Today… like so many other days… my heart is with all the children who are being harmed, violated, tortured, and traumatized, those who have no real protection. Feeling this is hard.

When I saw the video of inside the Walmart detention center and they spoke about how the children are being taught lessons about America, underneath the large mural of Trump, I kept thinking about the many indigenous youth that were stripped from their families and abusively forced to assimilate to white society. Here we are in 2018. Doing the EXACT SAME THING. When I hear about the tent cities being constructed to warehouse these children without their families, I feel the Japanese internment camps. Here we are again, 2018. This is America.

As I hear that 2000 children have been forcibly removed from their families in 6 weeks, I also feel the 10,000 children that are in ADULT prisons in the United States RIGHT NOW and the 3000 youth that have LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE sentences. We have 13 states that have no minimum age for trying a child as an adult. This is America. All children are not valued. They never have been.

On this day, June 17th, 47 years ago in 1971, President Nixon declared the “war on drugs” which increased the prison population by 700%. The millions of children that have been and continue to be terrorized and traumatized by the incarceration of people of color, the incarceration of their family members, is inhumane. This is America. These children’s lives were never valued.

So I continue to wonder and strategize, to feel so many feelings and stay in the pain and motivation — What will it take for us as Americans, and particularly us white women, to finally see the horrors that are imposed upon children of color, families of color, white children living in poverty, and say “no more”? We have opted for hundreds of years to perhaps feel in our hearts that something isn’t right, but to choose to “keep things safe for our own children and families” which means — pretending that lynching is okay, pretending that we don’t see the diffrent quality of education being offered to children of color than to white children, convincing ourselves that there is nothing that we can do or believing that we are too busy and too tired trying to raise our own families to do anything, pretending that the juvinal justice system and the criminal justice system is actually serving justice and protecting people of color, pretending or avoiding the fact that immigrant children have been abducted from their parents, or their parents forcefully removed from them, for years. Pretending or avoiding the realities that Native young girls are being raped and violated. And not being concerned that many white boys are suffering from a fierce complex that causes them to brutalize and terrorize other people, feeling superior to other people.

I know that I have not personally done anything harmful to these millions of children that are being tortured and abused around the world, actions inspired by Capitalistic, White Supremacy, Patriarchical motives that are often justified by Christian beliefs. However, I do feel that the blood is on my hands. I wake up with this feeling daily. If I am not actively working to face the cruelty that has been present since the beginning of my country and doing what I can to change the reality here, my conscience does not rest.

It will take us coming together and acting in many different ways to address once and for all the horror of who we are as a country. All of us are required, those of humane conscience, the hearts of gold, the people who are genuinely all about freedom, equality, and LOVE. No one can opt out if we genuinely want to create a more humane world. And there are as many ways to participate as there are people, there is no one right strategy. If you’re still reading this, PLEASE don’t hear my words as saying — “you have to act in the ways I act.” That’s not it. But you do have to act — and find the ways that are right for you, for your family, for your abilities, for your current emotional state.

This is not an easy journey. May as many people as possible find the courage to step in, for real. May we be supported by one another as we do so. May we be motivated by, accountable to, and guided by love. May we truly feel our interconnectedness.

And if you feel inspired to do something and you don’t know what to do — one key step is to educate yourself about history. Use google. Understand the patterns that are repeating themselves right now.

This morning, the first spacious morning in awhile, I wake with the urgent feeling. I must invest time and energy in understanding what is happening to migrant children and families right now. My feeling is that this moment is like that of early Nazi Germany. Being Jewish, I was taught about the Holocaust at an early age. I’ve often wondered about the days and years leading up to concentration camps. How did it happen? How did so many people sit by and let such horror happen. So today… I will learn more about what I am sitting by and allowing to happen.

My 12-year old friend asked me this morning what I was doing. I said, researching awful things. He couldn’t understand why I would choose to do that. If my heart becomes aware, I feel a responsibility to humanity to face the truth of what is happening and listen deeply for guidance about how I am to respond. I will keep sharing what I’m learning.

Research

May 25, 2018 — There isa new policy being enacted this year to separate children from their families at the border. Some may be arriving to seek legal asylum, some trying to cross the border, but these are young children arriving with family members. MSNBC Chris Hayes reports on this with expert guests. VIDEO HERE. This process includes babies and very young children. In the past, there were children who crossed the border on their own. However, the current policy is for the U.S. government to separate the children from their families, causing significant trauma for these young children who are already in a state of trauma as many are fleeing violence seeking safety (asylum) in the U.S.

“ICE has asked for permission to begin routinely destroying 11 kinds of records, including those related to sexual assaults, solitary confinement and even deaths of people in its custody. Other records subject to destruction include alternatives to detention programs, regular detention monitoring reports, logs about the people detained in ICE facilities, and communications from the public reporting detention abuses. ICE proposed various timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for reports about solitary confinement.”

“Keeping these documents available is necessary for the public to understand and fully evaluate the operation of a system that is notorious for inhumane and unconstitutional conditions affecting hundreds of thousands of people every year.”

“Recent reports by advocacy groups document sexual assaults in detention without adequate investigation or remedy, sub-standard medical care, the overuse of solitary confinement as well as threats and physical assault by custody staff. Since October 2016, there have been 10 deaths in immigration detention. Many of the records used in these reports and analyses would not have been made available without sustained public pressure to force ICE to maintain and divulge this information.”

2017 – 40,810 children were referred to ORR from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

2018 (through March) – 21,574 children referrals.

March 2017, ORR had 755 referrals; while in March 2018, ORR had 4,204 referrals.

Facilities

At this time, we have no temporary facilities open at Department of Defense locations. The last one closed in February 2017.

As of March 2018, we are operating one temporary influx facility at a Department of Labor site.

ORR now has its largest permanent shelter capacity at over 9,800 beds, and we continue to maintain the majority of our shelter capacity along the southern border.

In FY 2017, children typically stayed in ORR custody for 51 days and so far in FY 2018 (through March) average length of stay has been 56 days.

Teenagers

83 percent of referrals in FY 2017

87 percent in FY 2018.

“Children who migrate to the U.S. are particularly vulnerable to being exploited by human traffickers en route and at their destination.”

From Custody to Sponsors

2017 – ORR released 93 percent of children to a sponsor.

49 percent to parents

41 percent to close relatives

10 percent to other-than-close relatives or non-relatives.

2018 – ORR have released 90 percent of children to individual sponsors

41 percent were parents

47 percent were close relatives

11 percent were other-than-close relatives or non-relatives

“The report outlines ways that ORR has decreased the ability of potential sponsors to use fraudulent documents during the sponsor assessment process. Which must mean that there was a high degree of fraudulent documents being used by sponsors to acquire children.”

Losing track of at least 1,475 children

“From October to December 2017, ORR attempted to reach 7,635 UAC and their sponsors. Of this number, ORR reached and received agreement to participate in the safety and well-being call from approximately 86 percent of sponsors. From these calls, ORR learned that 6,075 UAC remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight UAC had run away, five had been removed from the United States, and 52 had relocated to live with a non-sponsor. ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 UAC.”

Department of Health and Human Services & Office of Refugee Resettlement currently not responsible for children taken into custody and then released to sponsors.

“It has been HHS’s long-standing interpretation of the law that ORR is not legally responsible for children after they are released from ORR care. However, considering the importance of the post-release period, we are taking a fresh look at that question as a matter of both legal interpretation and appropriate policy. Specifically, we are exploring the question of ORR’s responsibilities in relation to children who are released to sponsors, and whether the level of responsibility would differ depending on the child’s relationship to his or her sponsor. Based on what we have learned so far, if ORR were to remain legally obligated for the welfare of UAC after their release to a sponsor, or took on additional protective measures even if not legally obligated, those procedures would require a significant expansion of the current program structure and an increase in resources, and possibly additional legal authorities to further clarify ORR’s role.”

May 15, 2018 Hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

“Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifying May 15 before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee where she said evades what the policies are for causing the least amount of trauma for children and admits that more must be done to protect children taken at the border.”

“I couldn’t agree with your concerns more,” Nielsen said. “We owe it to these children to protect them.”

According to the article, HHS operates more than 100 shelters across the nation for children seized at the border.

Video of the hearing: http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?trackingGroup=93075&siteSection=inform_oembed&videoId=33812458

May 23, 2018 – Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, a 20 year-old woman from Guatemala was shot & killed by US Border Patrol. NYTimes and CNN report on this. Evidently the story from officials has changed sinced the incident.

“Guatemala condemns violent acts and any other use of excessive force by the Border Patrol. We urge authorities to respect the rights of our citizens, especially their right to live, regardless of their immigration status,” theGuatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

“The Trump administration is now going even further than the Obama administration in its attempts to deter asylum seekers, as it seeks to terrify mothers from coming here with their children. The prosecutions have already started flooding border courts, and this “zero-tolerance” policy has only just begun. Meanwhile the refugee crisis of Central America’s Northern Triangle countries continues apace—16 times the number of people from the region were displaced in 2017 as were in 2011, the the UN refugee agency noted in a recent report. The families have a legal right to seek asylum here—and as devastating as the consequences may be, they will not stop coming. The terror they leave behind is much worse.”

“In early May, Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, said he will take a stricture stance on illegal crossings of the Southern U.S. border, prosecuting 100% of people crossing, and making it an official policy to separate children from their parents. Already, 658 kids in the first 13 days of the programhave been ripped from their families, Customs and Border Protection disclosed in a Senate subcommittee hearing on May 23. (Video of the hearing below)”

“This policy is intended to punish the adults by criminally prosecuting them for entering the country, thereby deterring others from making the journey north. But it does incalculable damage to the children at an already traumatic moment in their lives, often stripping them from their mothers when their mothers are all they have.”

“There’s a real trend towards trying to put all asylum seekers in the same category as gang members even when all this young mother was seeking was to protect these young boys by bringing them to the US.” ~ director of University of Texas’s Immigration Law Clinic

“Time and time again, the women say they only brought their children here to save their lives.”

“Mothers convicted of illegal entry can be sentenced to up to six months in jail and be dealt up to $10,000 in fines, while the youths are shipped off to Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters around the country—and ORR and the US Marshals Service, which prosecutes the mothers, do not communicate, Jennifer Podkul, policy director for Kids in Need of Defense, told me.”

“Even once the parents are out of jail and transferred to immigrant detention centers, they remain divided from their kids—meaning some parents are deported before their children even know it, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants Rights Project.”

“Already the ORR shelters equipped to house unaccompanied minors—which until now have been children traveling without a parent—are 91 percent full. To quickly make more room, the Trump administration now plans to put kids on military bases—which the Obama administration did in the past with unaccompanied teens. But this setup is only meant for kids 13 and older for temporary emergency stays. And while the vast majority—83 percent last year—of unaccompanied minors entering the country have been older than 13, children traveling with parents tend to be far younger, often babies.”

“These children may have to wait for their parents to get out of detention, or they may seek another adult sponsor already in the US to claim them. But those adults are now more fearful to come forward, since the Trump administration just two weeks ago announced a proposal to collect information on potential sponsors’ immigration status, information that could be used for enforcement purposes. As Carey told me, “It appears we’re setting up a long-term incarceration system for children.”

“While each family makes up a single asylum case when that family is kept together, when parents and children are in different locations different courts handle them.”

“This spells trouble for a legal system already overwhelmed by a backlog of nearly 700,000 cases—and since immigrants don’t have the right to free legal help, we’re likely to see more young children representing themselves in immigration court.”

Video of the Senate hearing to the Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration. NOTE- the presiding Senator is Senator Tillis from North Carolina:
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/meetings/tvpra-and-exploited-loopholes-affecting-unaccompanied-alien-children

May 2018 ACLU Report
Looking at 2009-2014

“Children crossing the United States’ southern border are primarily from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Many migrant children from these countries are fleeing gang violence, social unrest, and endemic poverty.”

“Despite binding federal laws and agency policies to protect children at our borders, inadequate enforcement and oversight mechanisms have left this vulnerable group unprotected and without access to justice. A new report by the University of Chicago International Human Rights Clinic reviews one subset of the records—and documents shocking child abuse.”

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has the authority to detain migrant children for a limited period of time to determine whether the child should be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or qualifies for immediate removal from the United States.”

“By law, unaccompanied migrant children may only be held in CBP custody for 72 hours and are entitled to various basic protections, including: dignified and respectful treatment; safe, secure and clean facilities; adequate food and drinking water; and proper medical care. Federal law further requires personnel working in federal facilities to report possible child abuse to law enforcement, child protective services, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).”

“CBP officials have often ignored these legal obligations.”

“The records obtained reflect rampant abuse. Children describe excessive force: being stomped on, punched, kicked, run over with vehicles, tased, and forced to maintain stress positions by CBP officials. Minors also report verbal abuse: being called a “dog,” “piece of crap,” “son of a bitch,” and “prostitute,” and being told they “contaminate this country.” In complaints, children describe being deprived of edible food and potable water and held in freezing and unsanitary cells with inadequate bedding and no access to personal hygiene items. Children report being threatened with rape and death, being told to remove their clothing before they are subjected to questioning, and being touched inappropriately by CBP officials.”

“Children’s complaints of abuse have been ignored and mishandled, allowing CBP officials to act with impunity. DHS does not appear to have reported alleged child abuse out to the FBI. The records provide no indication that DHS has taken any remedial or disciplinary measures to hold any individual accountable for these abuses.”

One Pager: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kx3zey3b6s5hmbu/CBP_1-Pager_final.pdf?dl=0

Full Report:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lplnnufjbwci0xn/CBP%20Report%20ACLU_IHRC%205.23%20FINAL.pdf?dl=0

Social Terror, Social Manipulation

“Every time Trump says “MS-13,” he wants you to think “Latino.” He wants you to think “immigrant.”Then he wants you to think back to “criminal.” Then he SAYS the word “animal,” until, in your mind, criminal-immigrant-animal become like one word. One idea.Folks, this is obvious.” ~Drew Dellinger

What to do?

Do your own research, be an informed consumer of media — Look at the dates of articles that you read and share. Read the whole article before sharing it. Click on the links to the sources that the article references. If there aren’t any sources, question it. If the links are broken, question it. If it’s an old article, investigate more to see if it is current. Realize that this issue is not new. The new aspect is the current administration’s policy to separate families at the border, causing more trauma and terror. However, misconduct, high numbers of deportations, and such was a problem during the Obama administration also. We as a country face many humanitarian crises that are getting worse with the current administration, but are not new. Catch up if you are not aware of this.

Take action (contact legislature) and raise awareness about the separation of children from their families at the border. (Do NOT focus on the missing children. While best beauroctratic practices are to keep track of people, we do not want the current enforcement agencies to be tracking down these missing children as many are likely intentionally hiding from the authorities. And the methods being used to track them down are perpetuating terror and discriminatory deportation.) Focus on the fact that children, very young children, are being separated from their parents when there is no reason that threatens the well-being of the child. This causes extreme trauma to these young children. Tell the representatives to intervene to insure that these people have legal rights, that they are allowed bond while they move through the court system, that they are not locked up in detention centers for indefinite amounts of time.

Contact U.S Congressman Mark Meadows and Senator Thom Tillis — express your concern about the national policies for separating children from their families. You can also make a local ask that they pressure ICE to allow the people from Buncombe and Henderson County to be allowed out of the detention centers on bond. Don’t make them stay locked up as they wait for trial, allow them be released on bond.

If you are a business owner or work for a business, sign this petition. These legislatures consider themselves pro-business and thus are more likely to listen to the demands of business owners. Petition (source CIMA and Ami Worthen)

Ruby Sales is organizing caravans across America that will start out in different cities of America and will end up at a designated space. If you are moved to stand, please email me at info@ spirithouseproject.org or call 718 601 0235 — “We can no longer remain silent or we become collaborators in a new system of captivity, sexual violations, psychological terror and deliberate acts by ICE to separate them from their parents. These White travesties echo acts by White Americans during enslavement when they captured Black children and sold them from their families. Now once again the evil that bred these actions during enslavement never died and lives today in the pathology of White supremacy.I woke up this morning knowing that we cannot remain silent as this government presides over and engineers a predatory system that separates Black and Brown immigrant children at the border from their families even selling them into the hands of White sex traffickers!”

Support charities and organizations dedicated to helping children – The Young Center for Immigrant and Children’s Rights focuses on the rights, safety, and best interests of unaccompanied immigrant children. United We Dream is the first and largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country. KIND: Kids in Need of Defense is effective in supporting children’s protection and upholding their right to due process and fundamental fairness. The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project supports detailed adults and unaccompanied children who have been detained in Arizona, often illegally. Asylum Advocacy works to prevent the deportation of refugees fleeing violence and war, who have come here seeking legal asylum, provides emergency legal services, and a lot more. Lutheran Immigration Services has been helping resettle refugees and reunite families since 1939. The UN Refugees Agency isn’t specific to US refugee and immigrant issues, but they support victims fleeing from conflict in myriad ways. (h/t Amanda Litman on Twitter who continues to share a crowdsourced list of organizations that are helping.) The National Immigrant Justice Association of the Heartland Alliance ensures human rights protections and access to justice, including legal services, for all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

I recently facilitated a session where someone shared in the closing reflections that they felt dehumanized. For anyone to feel dehumanized by my actions is, for me, a fail. When I mess up, it’s imperative for me to own it, learn from the experience, act differently in the future, and make amends as best as I am able. My hope is that this public reflection will help me integrate what I am learning and potentially be valuable for people reading this (as I know I am one of many who carries the identities of a facilitator and a white woman). I am committed to facilitating with integrity and humility. Reflecting in depth on the feedback I receive is an essential part of my commitment. What follows is my perceptions and analysis. I’m sure that there is more to see from the perspective of other people who were present.

Perceptions About Power that I had Walking into this Session

When I am facilitating a group, I always hold power in the room. I guide where a group goes or doesn’t go. I hold the actual or symbolic microphone, making decisions about whose voices are heard or not heard. I take up space. I am the center of attention at times. I have influence over what is or isn’t happening in the room. Sometimes I use my power in ways that are contrary to how a person in the room would like the time to be spent. I take very seriously this facilitator’s position of power and influence and strive to use it to make equitable spaces where people are respected and able learn from each other.

I am a white person and a White Woman. I share these identities with many other people that have historically and still currently hold social power simply because we are white. We act in all kinds of ways, intentionally or unknowingly, that hold us as superior and others as inferior. We have and still do cause trauma and harm towards people of color. Historically (and currently), white folks and White Women had the power of being listened to and believed, our word would be taken as the true word when in relationship with people who did not have as much social power as someone who looks like me. I would be listened to while others weren’t. And many, many folks who looked like me used that power to not only get what we wanted and control other people, but to actually harm other people. When I show up in a room, I am showing up as myself in that moment, and I am also showing up in the image of other people who looked like me and were allowed to be abusive, harmful, and inconsiderate, to name just a few things, towards people who did not look like me.

When I’m facilitating (and in life), sometimes people will be responding to my direct actions. Sometimes people will be responding to my actions that resemble those of people who looked like me in the past.

Another identity that I can embody is that of a White School Teacher, an archetype that has historically been abusive with its power (along with the education system at large). 80% of teachers in public schools in the United States are white and it is well researched that white teachers and the education system that white folks have created have not been fair, kind, honest, or effective in educating students of color (and some might argue all students).

As a white facilitator, particularly when working in a multi-racial setting, I must be hyper aware of my whiteness and all the ways that I am using or releasing my power and even the ways that those who looked like me have used and abused our power in the past.

What I learned in the Experience I Facilitated

Knowing all of that above — There was a 15-minute section of time where I forgot that I was white. I was centered on the task of facilitating a process and learning experience. I slipped into the role of a teacher. I used my power as the facilitator to teach the group something that I thought was important for them to learn. I did not realize that when I was the facilitator interrupting participants (an act that felt appropriate for what I was teaching in the moment), I was also a white woman, perhaps a white teacher, interrupting and shutting down people of color — a behavior that is very common for white people to do. In hindsight, I think if I had been holding in my awareness that I was white in that tense moment, I would have used my facilitator power in a way that did not replicate patterns of white folks using our power to oppress and silence people of color. But I forgot that I was white (a privilege and pattern that happens often for us white folks). It was a harsh reminder about how much diligence it takes to consciously disrupt habits of whiteness that are alive in me. I’ve grown up in a world that allows me to not know what it means to be white, but to just exist as “a person.” That ignorance is unacceptable if I am facilitating multi-racial groups and working towards racial justice and healing.

As a facilitation team, we were teaching something that the group did not give us consent to teach. This is contrary to how I like to operate, how I believe education is effective, and to my own sense of respect for learners. But I did not realize I was living that until it was too late.

I am reflecting on the wounds people carry from up to 25 years of schooling with white teachers that were abusive with their power. When I am facilitating and “teaching” something, how often might I be summoning up past experiences of trauma or mistrust from the white teachers of someone’s childhood?

I am also reflecting on — what could it have looked like for someone to interrupt and name the ways my whiteness was showing up and influencing the moment?

What Happened — The Facilitated Experience

A social justice fellowship hired 3 consultants (a multi-racial team) to guide the Fellows (majority people of color) in a process to co-design the rest of their programming and curriculum with an allocated amount of money to work with. We facilitated:

Pre-session: 1-on-1 interviews

Session 1: Connecting, understanding the mission, the kind of learning environment that they want to experience and create

Session 2: Relationships with money, capitalism and collectively shaping a power analysis of what they want to amplify, interrupt and innovate

Session 3: Collective Decision-making process and begin designing

Session 3 is the session I’m reflecting on here. Our goal was to give the Fellows an overview of a collective decision-making process and then facilitate them through the process, highlighting the process in action along the way so that they could take over the facilitation and facilitate themselves as our contract ended after session 3. In session 1 we asked if anyone had experience with a collective decision-making process. No one raised their hand so we proceeded with the assumption that we would be offering them a process that would be new to them, something for them to experience first hand and then they could choose to use or not use it. We chose a consent-based decision-making process as the tool that we would offer.

Some mistakes that I and we made:

We did not explicitly get consent from the Fellows to teach them and guide them through the particular consent decision-making process.

Before we began practicing and using the process, I was assigned the role of explaining the process. We had created a handout and I explained the elements of the handout. My approach was very didactic teaching. In session 1, the majority of the Fellows indicated that they did not like learning in a lecture type environment. At least one Fellow indicated that they did like more traditional teaching styles sometimes. I was not listening to their request to learn by doing, but was instead taking 45 minutes to teach and explain.

I used my power as the facilitator and the assumptions that I had made that they were open to receiving the process and forced them to participate in the process, at times interrupting an organic flow so that I could fit their organic reactions into the process and highlight for them how to follow the steps. While I knew why I was making those choices, they did not and I think it felt like me inserting my power to control the process in the way I wanted it to go, disregarding their wishes and efforts towards shared leadership.

When I was using my power as a facilitator to interrupt people while they were talking and connect what they were saying to the process, not only was I forcing participation into something they didn’t consent to, I was also wearing my white skin, in a position of power, and interrupting people of color and exerting my power over people of color.

Some comments made in the closing reflections that particularly stood out to me:

Over-explaining is a form of Anti-Blackness

To point out process feels dehumanizing

Trust us that the work you’ve done is effective and we’ve got this

It felt like we were being blocked by the facilitation

I apologized for the mistakes I could see in the closing circle and I will continue to listen for ways that I can make amends for any harm that I caused. And, I think the best way for me to repair from these mistakes is to be diligent in myself about not replicating the same mistakes. I know as a white woman, my whiteness will continue to be revealed to me, and my inability to see how I am part of the problem or perpetuating problems will be illuminated. My prayers are that I keep learning, unlearning and embodying my growth and that I cause as little harm as possible. I know that I am on this journey of racial healing and racial justice for the long haul and I pray that I show up with humility and integrity, contributing in places where my presence is of value and is not a disruption to healing and justice.

“So in 2018, white folks, stop showering us with empty compliments, being over-eager to befriend us & all that- just stop. It’s sad how badly you want your niceties to morph into freedom from white guilt.

And it doesn’t accomplish what you think it does, it just insults us when you think your biased kindness suffices in a world where we need you to actually undo systematic oppression.”
~ Alex Williams (read the full post)

I see a lot of white folks feeling pushed to a new edge with the blatant racism of the president of our country calling Black and Brown countries shithole countries.

I’m glad it is unsettling.
We’re all needed to actually undo systemic oppression.

“It’s more important for level-headed people to be strategic rather than outraged.” ~Don Lemon

May we use our outrage strategically to work together and undo systemic oppression.

“In the face of daunting challenges, we must summon the courage to believe we are the ones we have been waiting for, take risks, and experiment towards solutions. We’re being asked to believe in our inherent capacity, step into the unknown, and challenge deeply held assumptions. For most of us, that’s radically disruptive and contrary to how we’ve organized ourselves to succeed in life… Together we will become the leaders we collectively need. And in the process we will continuously grow and shift and change to meet each new challenge.”